 Good afternoon to everyone and welcome to this IIEA webinar on the topic of the enlargement of the European Union. I'm Peter Gunning, a member of the Institute and it's my pleasure to chair today's event and to introduce to you our two distinguished speakers. This event is part of the future-proofing Europe project of the IIEA and is supported by the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs. Our speakers will first address us for about 20 minutes or so and then we will go to question and answer with you, our audience. Both the presentation and the Q&A are on the record. You can join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, consending your questions as they occur to you during the discussion, presentation, and we will come to certainly as many of them as possible after the presentations. You can also join the discussion on using the handle at IIEA and the webinar is also being live streamed on YouTube. It's over 50 years since the first enlargement of the European EEC as it was then that brought Ireland into the community and began the road from six members to nine and eventually to the 27 that we have today. Further enlargement is now clearly on the Union's agenda and without stealing any of the thunder from our two speakers, I think it's fair to say that this process will be complicated. It will certainly be time consuming and it will impose considerable costs. We are very fortunate to have Pervan Scheberez and Nikolai von Ondartha, two speakers who bring a great deal of knowledge and experience to this topic. Pervan Scheberez, who will speak first, was a member of the European Parliament as a socialist for over 20 years and occupied chairing posts there in the economic and the social areas. She was a member of the European Convention, the Convention charged with drafting a constitution for Europe, which eventually morphed into the Lisbon Treaty. She is a board member currently of the Fondation Jeanne Jorais, a member of the Ethic and Audit Committee of the ECB as well. Dr. Nikolai von Ondartha is head of the EU-Europe Research Division in the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, the SPP, in Berlin. He has specialized in German foreign policy and European integration that has advised the German government, the Bundestag and the EU Commission on Brexit and on democracy in the EU. Importantly for us here in the Institute, he is the coordinator of the Irish-German Joint Vision Forum, an exchange format of the German and Irish foreign ministries, the IIEA and the SPP. So without further ado, I invite Pervan Scheberez to kick off our webinar with a presentation on the topic of enlargement, sailing the high seas. Pervan Scheberez yours. Thank you very much. Hello to everybody. Thank you, dear chair for this initiative. I think it's always very timely to discuss and re-discuss this report, especially because we are now in a schedule which is in between two moments in the agenda of the European Council. And this report is definitely here to be as a contribution to the debate in the European Council. This is exactly its target. And why am I saying that we are in between two of them? Well, because the last European Council confirmed that there should be a roadmap for the next strategic agenda of the EU. Taking into account the target of enlargement that the heads of states and government have defined. And in principle, you could expect that just after the European Parliament selection in the next European Council would be defined what should be this roadmap. And here, if you look for good ideas to fill in this roadmap, I think you need to read and reread and go through this report. I'm not saying this because I was a member of this expert group, but because I know if you look at what's on the scene today, there are not so numerous contributions. Everybody is waiting for the contribution by Enrico Leta on the functioning of the internal market or by Mario Haddi on the competition issue. But they are more focused on items that were not in our mandate. The origin of our report is as it does happen sometime in history. You can start with the big picture or with the small picture and here I will speak to start with the small picture. You were ahead of the 16th anniversary of the Lisbon Treaty that was going to take place in Paris with Olaf Scholz coming to visit Emmanuel Macron. And there were a lot of expectations what's going to be in the final declaration, who is going to speak about what and blah, blah, blah. And in parallel, you had a very, very good relationship between the two Secretary of State for Europe on the German side, Anna Lourman, who is still in this position, and Lawrence Bourne, who was at that time Secretary of State for Europe in the French government. They were going on very well together and so they thought, well, there's a good base to do something into a Franco-German dimension, how do you do it? And their mandate, of course, covers only the topic that I'll deal with in the General Affair Council. But as you know, this is a general council, so it's quite wide in its scope. Even though, you can say it doesn't go into the meaty-greedy of all the technical discussion, but this might be a good point of entry if you want to have a good Franco-German discussion. On this basis, the mandate for the expert group was defined by a joint press release on the 23rd of January last year. With a mandate that was not duplicated in the official declaration, but of course the two heads of states and government had agreed for the settling of this report. So this is exactly where we stand. And it was six German experts versus six French experts. I'm not going to go through the whole list of the composition of the group, you can find it on the website or in the report. And the mandate, as we had understood it, was around a triangle. What needs to be done to make the EU function better? When everybody knows it's going to enlarge, that's the second dimension of the triangle. And the third one is how to make sure that the rule of law is respected and even improved. And around this triangle, we've been working with a working method I have to describe because I think it's part of the success of this report. First, we had to know each other and to network among us. And the way we did it was to form a couple between one French and one German expert around a theme that we had defined on the long list. Asking these couple to work on, to elaborate a note that would open the discussion among us. And then there could be an allure tour between the couple and the group to discuss the point raised in the note, in the written note. In the beginning, we thought it would be all part of the report, but in the end, after I would say four or five months, it appeared that we knew where we wanted to go. And that there were common issue or common view sufficiently described to be drafted. And on this basis, then we didn't work so much on the basis of the note and we concentrate on the drafting of the report on which we had two rapporteurs, one from the French side and one from the German side. We used to meet for two hours each two times a week on the Friday morning, plus additional hearing. We didn't publish the list of the hearings because we didn't want to enter into diplomatic issue. But we've been, we had hearing with actual members of the commission of the council of candidate countries, official MEPs, national politics. I mean, we had a wide, quite a wide range of hearings that allow us to have to check ideas we had, and to collect also important ideas. Then, when it comes to the report itself, I always describe the end result as a conservative one because it's a two important entry point for me in the report. The first one is what we call the hybrid nature of the EU, which means that we don't want, we didn't want to change the balance of power inside the EU between the three institution. By willing not to change this balance, this is where I'm saying we're conservative. For example, some reform that we didn't discuss because we thought from the start that it would reshuffle completely the balance of power inside the commission. For example, the merge of the two function, president of the commission and president of the council. This would upset completely the institutional triangle and we didn't want to do it. So we put it aside. This is one example. There are others. The second important thing that was framing of our thinking was that the basis for the EU is the rule of law. It is not so obviously present in all the texts in all the treaty and so on, but the more and more we were progressing in the drafting of the report, we were convinced that this is the key. This is what make the glue of the EU, the state of the union. And we even defined it as a prerequisite for enlargement. And this is where we do have some proposal that are quite forward looking. One is the first, our favorite one of course would be to a reform of article seven. But if we are not able to do it, which is the article on how to implement a sanction when the state of the rule of law is not respected. If it's not possible, then we would like to enlarge the way the conditionality is now implemented. As you know, during this mandate, there has been introduced the conditionality on the use for the sake of the budget of the EU budget on the use of EU funds. And we see this as quite an efficient tools, but we see some difficulties with these tools in the fact that it does touch population that are not responsible for the behavior of the governments on the one hand, and that it might help, it might push some stakeholders in government. Not respecting the rule of law against the EU, instead of helping them to approach the EU spirit. So this is why we propose to all legal expert are not of this opinion, but we think instead of just focusing the conditionality tools, the good use of public funds. It should be also linked to the respect of the value and the objective of the treaty, namely of article two of the treaty and we think this should be an ordinary legislative reform that should be implemented. So, first, no change to the triangle, second rule of law as number one, and third, flexibility, because if you move from an EU of 27 to an EU of 37, and you want to keep this triangle as it work, it means you have, you need to have as a cornerstone the triangle and it's good functioning and its efficiency. But the price for this is more flexibility. And this is why we have introduced many proposal to address this objective. And for example, Nicola will elaborate a bit more on what we propose with the treaty. But the thing is, we want to have, and in the end, what does it mean? It means between the community method and the intergovernmental one. We always favored the first one with flexibility, which means not everybody needs to be on board all the time for all the policies, but it needs to be inside the community method. So it's an open door for all the one willing to join. But the compromise here is that if you do it in this format, you should allow the coalition of the willing to go ahead if they're willing to do so. And really, I think I'm not going to go more into the detail because I see my time is over. But I think from a strategic point of view, this would be my three main messages. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for that introductory survey. Now I turn to Dr Nicola Bonandas to flesh out the rest of the views on the report. Yes, thank you very much, Peter. And thank you very much for laying out our general ideas. I will go a little bit more in depth on some of our proposals. But also the question on treaty change, which I know is particularly tricky for Ireland and the reaction our reports gathered so far in Brussels and picking up from what Pamour spoke about our general ideas. After this main principle of strengthening of the rule of law, we looked really in depth on how this perspective perspective enlargement would change the different EU institutions and how they should be adapted. I think the best way of illustrating the challenge had for us is if you look at the numbers by coincidence, the population of the six Western Balkan countries, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, so nine of the current prospective candidates, leaving Turkey aside for the moment. So those nine have roughly the population of the United Kingdom, which obviously left the European Union, but they would have nine times the vetoes in the Council, they would have nine times the commissioners. They would have about double the numbers of members of the European Parliament since small countries are represented bigger in the European Parliament. But they would have only a fraction of the UK's economic power and would be more heterogeneous in their history in their economic outlook, and also in their foreign and security policies. And based on that, we made a couple of proposals. I'm not going to go into details on all of them, but I will try to highlight a couple of them. One of the first was adapting the Council of the EU, whereas I said it would be nine times the vetoes that we propose to extend qualified majority voting to all areas of policy decisions. With the adaptation that we said, there should be a rebalancing of voting powers between in favor of the smaller countries because in many of our reach outs, we heard the fear of too much power for France and Germany if there's too big of an extension of qualified majority voting. And we also included the option of opt-outs, at least for new areas of qualified majority, reflecting to the principle of flexibility that have been outlined. And here would be really the idea that most if not all policy decisions of the EU in the Council should be taken by majority voting, but with some further protections, especially for smaller EU countries. A second point and this relates to that would be to keep the current maximum number of members of the European Parliament 751 to not make the European Parliament, the second largest Parliament in the world that it's almost unworkable. But that would entail that, especially some of the larger member states, but also the others would lose a couple of seats in the European Parliament and there should be a new mechanism for distributions. And if we look at the third institution, the European Commission, and I know that this is particularly controversial in Ireland as this was set in stone after the first negative vote in the referendum in Ireland and the Lisbon Treaty. We propose to come back to the original idea of the Lisbon Treaty to reduce the number of commissioners, either by introducing a rotation mechanism, or by introducing some kind of hierarchy between commissioners in order to make it workable. This should be still in a balance to small member states, but we believe that a commission with 3035 members sitting around the table would be next to unworkable. So this should be addressed as part of the enlargement. A couple of other points that I would like to highlight is that we also propose to include more participatory elements for citizens, including for citizens from candidate countries, so that they are on the way to enlargement that could already be engagement between citizens from different EU countries as well as the candidate countries to prepare also the democratic support that there needs to be at the end of the day to enlarge the EU in such a mechanism. And, and this may be the most controversial for between the Germans and the French one we proposed to, or at least said that the EU budget needs to increase and the decision making for the EU budget needs to be flexible lies in order to prepare the EU for such an undertaking, which invariably will also affect the EU budget, although we did not sort of go into details into policy areas, like agriculture or cohesion policy, but really focused on the institutional side of things and there said, if we have this discussion about reform and enlargement, we also need to address the budgetary question. A final point that I want to address because it might also be interesting for Ireland is that we proposed as Pavange said that along with this preparation for enlargement that there also needs to be thinking about a more flexible EU, and there we proposed really that the EU should, or that the EU of today already is organized in a way that we have a core of countries around the Eurozone the Schengen, the Schengen area that are closely tight and more tightly integrated island being part of the Eurozone but not part of the European Union than the full European Union and then around there some countries like Norway or Switzerland which are connected to some shape or form to the single market and then maybe at the most outer tier the United Kingdom which still has this bilateral trade agreement with the EU, works together with the EU and the European political community, but it's not in any way associated with the single market and we propose to formalize that, especially sort of thinking ahead of enlargement, that was to some extent interpreted in the UK media as us offering an associate membership to the United Kingdom I just want to say here that this wasn't very much not our focus but really our thinking was, if the EU extends to 3035 or even more member states, there needs to be a more flexible integration and the openness for countries who do not want to be part of a closer political integration to be associated to the single market without becoming a full EU members. What we did not want to do is to say this is an alternative to enlargement, but rather, this is only for those countries who do not want to be fully politically integrated into the EU. Now I want to address the second question and this is maybe also one of the politically most controversial ones is how to get there. And Pervod already said we are sort of in a typical European process. The US now decided to open up accession negotiations with Ukraine, Moldova, and potentially Bosnia has a governor. There's going to be some kind of roadmap for the future adopted after the EU elections together with the strategic agenda in June. And there is this 2030 maybe even later date floating around in Brussels when this enlargement is actually going to going to happen. And this is very strongly connected to the question of treaty change, where we adopted in the group the position that from our perspective. First, we wanted to look at the reforms itself and not decide everything on the question of treaty change so following the principle of form follows functions. We first outline which are the reforms we thought would be necessary to prepare the EU for 3035 members and then address the questions does that require treaty change. And coming from that and from some of the proposals, Pervod and I outlined on some but not if on all of them we came to the conclusions they are only implementable. If there are some changes to the treaty, not the fundamental reform like the Lisbon Treaty, but some targeted adaptation of the treaty. And how to get there. We said there are also several options. The clearest option would be a traditional treaty change with with the convention, where all of these changes were implemented. But we know full well that this is quite controversial and tricky in many many EU member states, including an island so we said, or outline other options for instance, introducing these changes, the necessary changes. And the accession treaty so together with the accession so that the reforms would also come into come into place by the time the first new member joins joins the European Union but at the end of the day this will be a political choice by the EU member states of the EU whether and in how far they are willing to adapt the treaties and make these changes for for enlargement, which brings me to my to the final point as we're already sort of closing into into half past one or where I'm sitting. And this is the reactions and the path ahead and we presented the ideas of this report last September to the General Affairs Council to colleagues from the European commissions and many others and I think it's fair to say that it has helped other contributions to really stimulate the debate on how the EU should adapt in light of this enlargement and at the December Council together with the decision to open accession negotiation with Ukraine and Moldova. The heads of states and government of all the EU countries with let's say a creative coffee break by Victor Orban decided. Additionally, that not only the member states the candidate countries need to reform to become members of the European Union, but that the European Union itself needs needs to reform. And so clearly enshrining this principle that both enlargement process and reform should go parallel hand in hand, and that this is one of the geo strategic task for the EU in the in the next years to come without setting a specific date, nor with setting a specific framework on which reforms would actually be on the discussion so the consensus that there is now between the EU member states I would say is on a very, very general level and acceptance that reform and enlargement should go hand in hand and and should be discussed in parallel. But I think we are still far away from a consensus of which of these reforms, proposes that others and we outlined would actually be picked up and from the feedback of the member states and different national governments, I would say, and the ideas. And this principle that was also highlighted often not aiming for a fundamental transformation of the EU but rather adapting the institutions to be ready for 3035 countries was well received as a pragmatic and serious kickoff to the discussions, but many member states are continue to be very reluctant to engage in discussions that would require treaty change, and are looking to find flexible solutions that, in their point of view, could be adapted within the framework of the Lisbon Treaty. So I think a major decision for for the EU ahead for all EU countries, including Germany and France, but also Ireland will be on how to actually sort of synchronize these two negotiations on enlargement and reform in the in the legislative period when enlargement can happen and how far and ambitious the reforms should be in order to prepare the EU and and whether and in which form that should include also some changes to the to the EU treaties and this would maybe be our sort of kickoff to the ideas. We look forward to the to the questions and the discussions. Well, thank you both very much indeed. You've certainly given us a great deal to talk about and to think about. And if I may ask the first question, you've had the benefit of inside of discussions if I can call that with members of the Council of the Commission and of the Parliament and others indeed. And are you and one of the phrases you use there in describing the attitude towards dealing with treaty changes of reluctance because of sensitivities. So perhaps a little disappointed at the what appears to be a gap between the stated aim of the Union to enlarge, including to Ukraine, and the lack of a concrete progress on the sort of changes that you outlined will be necessary. Thank you in particular of your report where you highlighted the opportunity to do a number of things before or in the context of the European Parliament elections which are now on the as we were saying seven or eight weeks away. Maybe I can start and Nicola will will complete. I mean, your question is straight to the point. And please do remember our report was for the human Council and not for the human Parliament, because as you know, in part to our work the Parliament took a completely different road and we didn't want to follow this road. I mean, there are there are some juncture between the two reports by the Parliament's report is something that might be interesting for history but that will not be swallowed by the human Council when we wanted to have a leverage here. And our leverage, I would say, was the first thing was to, and we had long discussion about this was to define a timetable, because we know in the EU method it's a good, it's a used it in principle it's a successful method. We also decide, Longley discussed what should be this timetable and we decided should be 2013 to make sure the EU is ready for the enlargement, which means it's not as usual when we discuss enlargement country, we can that country needs to be ready, we need to be ready, which means the next mandate. I mean, it's, it's quite a paradox also in terms of public opinion because the whole European Parliament selection campaign I don't know how it's in Ireland, Ireland or in Germany but in France I can tell you, no one is going to discuss enlargement because this is not popular, but the mandate of the next Parliament and the next commission is to get the EU ready for this next enlargement. Also, because of geo strategic reason, even if it's not enough for enlargement. This is also a good reason to do it. And this tension that you are mentioning is everywhere in the Council. This is why I think one of the option that we have open, which is to bridge the two, because some people are completely opposed to enlargement, even though they don't dare to say it but they know their public opinion is not ready for that. And, but you cannot honestly consider the state of the play of the decision process in the EU, and say that it's it's already functioning today. So even without enlargement, it's true that you need reform, but there, there's absolutely no appetite for a treaty change for many reasons and I think our two countries have contributed to this. So, so to overcome this difficulty, you have to clearly define the timetable. 2013 is a point of rendezvous where you need to be ready. But the end, we are not, we are not. I think we are very one of the reason why this report can be useful is we are not completely out of the world in our proposal we are very pragmatic, and we take stock of the state of the play. So somehow our proposal are ambitious, but they are realistic. And when they are realistic is to say you cannot have a new functioning of 37 member state without flexibility and you cannot have the needed flexibility inside the community method, which is the one where member state can feel at ease. Without treaty change. This is the key, the key. And to be honest, my thinking is that because of this resistance to any treaty change, the way to do it is really to lick the tool. You will have enlargement because of your strategic reason. And to do this to achieve this. Well, you need to have the treaty change. And, and you, but you're right. I think more could have been done, including ahead of the human problem selection. This, this didn't happen so much. But it's not a reason to give up. And one, the basis for this Franco German compromise, I think, I mean, we've been quite. We have demonstrate where Franco Germans working together. French and German working together can be helpful, because we've been doing proposal that goes against the well known interest of our two member state because we know if you want the EU to function better. You need more qualified majority. And it's not enough to say where you want more qualified majority. You need also to define how it applies, because otherwise, you never, we will never get other countries to accept the deal. Because as Nicola rightly said, other country believe that if you keep the state of the players, it's currently on the table. It's only a coalition of Franco German plus one country or two countries that can make the deal which is not fair. Even though we have seen in the recent negotiation on the platform workers that French and Germany can be put in minority, but it's an exception that doesn't confirm the rule. So this is the spirit in which we've been working accepting to move on qualified majority to change the criteria for the qualified majority to make it helpful for decision making process in the EU. Maybe I wish to add. Yes, please. Thoughts on the question of disappointment I think where we were at least happy to see that there has been progress on the discussion we remember that we made a presentation of our interim ideas around May last year so roughly a year after the European Council said first time Ukraine would be a candidate countries. And there the majority of member states hadn't even thought about all these ideas they basically said okay we need to talk with our capitals. There's no form opinions. And just three, four months later in September, we saw that really this discussion was triggered, and the European Council was able to say in Granada and then in December to say, Okay, these two processes we all agree need to go hand in hand so I think this is an achievement. Not only by us, I think all the many people work together on that. But I think they are the report contributed to that. What I think we've also seen is, and this is maybe where the disappointment comes part comes in that there are many countries which are in favor of enlargement, but are very hesitant to address some of these questions. The biggest example is probably Poland, very, very strongly in favor of enlargement of Ukraine, but suddenly seeing what even the opening up of some of the trade borders and is doing to their farmers to their workers, and suddenly pushing back. Others like Denmark very strongly in favor of enlargement saying, we need to adapt the decision making, but then very clearly saying as Denmark is also one of the countries which need to have a referendum. We don't want any treaty change. And I think this confrontation between on the one hand saying this is in our geostrategic interest, we want the EU to enlarge and confronting the difficult questions that will only come if there's progress on the enlargement question. And if member states are being sort of pushed to confront these questions and there I think disappointment is maybe too strong a word, but we learned again that this political instinct to push the difficult questions into the future and only address them when they have to be absolutely have to be addressed. It's very much alive and many EU member states so that they agree now on the general principle of reform, but are very, very reluctant so far to really come to a sort of to come to a conclusion which reforms do we actually want to agree and when is our point of time when we when we need to strike that agreement. Well exactly and this your report and discussions like this I hope will will help to push that process forward. So the first question I have from the audience is from Dara Lawler who works as a researcher at the Institute. I suppose this follows rather particularly Irish concern in an enlarged European Union, do you propose to extend qualified majority voting at the Council to tax issues. Evidently this would be of particular interest to Ireland, particularly in the sphere of corporate tax. We'd like to take that the corporate tax. We both can go there but you want to start this time. Yeah, I can, I can start this time so our, we made the proposal to say all policy decisions, so not constitutional ones like changing the treaties or accepting new members, those should remain anonymous but all policy decisions should come should fall under qualified majority voting. But also that we could think about sort of different, different packages between policy areas and certainly I think tax policy is one where the French side would be a little bit more interested in putting that under qualified majority voting, whereas, speaking, sort of, from what I know for the German government, there would be a little bit more hesitation, even though Olaf Scholz also included tax policy as one of the examples for qualified majority in his Prague speech in 2022. And so, yes indeed, our proposal would be to include that. However, with these additional points that we put in every area where we propose to extend qualified majority voting, which would be a form of what we call a sovereignty safety net so a safety clause where vital national interests are at stake. The options for opt out for new areas that would fall under qualified majority voting and this rebalancing between, between larger and smaller member states. But I think it's clear, at least from our point of view that for the use capacity to act if we think about an EU 35 country of 3035 countries. Then, most if not all policy decisions really need to fall under qualified majority voting. Otherwise, it's going to be quite, quite easily blocked. And I would also argue that out voting or qualified majority voting is usually not used as a tool to out vote large groups of member states, but rather to forge compromises, because then countries need to coordinate and compromise from the very outset of negotiations. And this could be a helpful tool for all member states if discussions also on on tax policies would from the outset be organized towards tax policies and we saw in the OECD debate that Irish diplomacy is quite a task and very adapt also in handling these discussions. So I wouldn't have a question about islands still being able to push its own interests, even in areas where discussions and decisions are made by qualified majority voting. Very interesting. And thank you for the compliment. Do you wish to add to that? Yeah, just just one point because I mean our principle in approaching this question of the scope of qualified majority is that it should policies should be decided by qualified majority. And but for purpose of compromise and of negotiation, we had defined three blocks enlargement and rule of law foreign policies and defense fiscal and tax policies so tax policy would clearly come with the fiscal issue. And I think what Nikola because this goes hand in hand of the with the question of the giving up the veto right somehow that unanimity gives you. And this is where the but Nikola has mentioned regarding the server and safety net is for us critical, which we can we can observe that in the Council sometimes a veto right is also observed is also used as a hostage for that another aspect of the discussion. And the principle of this sovereign safety net is to oblige minister but also heads of states and government to consider the difficulty or the question that is raised by one member state per se, without melting all the other point on the table, just to be able to address the question and the issue. The member state wants to relate to to to to raise and just to make sure that if this is related to a real somehow objective national interest. It can be considered discussed explain and then solve somehow it's the method we have used in this Franco German working group for that we want to extend, which is in this atmosphere that was not at the top between the head of states and government and the different members of the government. Just be around the table, explain your position, and then you can agree even on on on defense, or on a new, new borrowing capacity, which we have included in the report which was not obvious in the start but it's a, it's really a, I would I sense a new method spirit that we have tried to apply here. Thank you. Thank you both very much. So the second question comes from staffer at the Michael McGuire at the European Commission office. He asks, what are your views on creating a mechanism to expel member states in the case of persistent breaches of rule of law standards, for example, the kind of super article seven he calls it. Do we want an exclusion close and we say no, this is why we have introduced this flexibility. This is why we have introduced. I mean, I have to go to a more detailed approach but it's critical here. We have mentioned the fiscal compact as a feasible option for the future. What does it mean. It means you remember with the fiscal compact. The position by German by UK for such a treaty. They were not interested in it. And so the member states and government heads of state and government have designed a special treaty using the commission and the council institution inside the treaty. The only one that was left aside was the human parliament with which is a problem that would need to be solved in the future if you would replicate this solution, but which is a treaty. A site of the treaty. And what we suggest is that if there's a new position to a way where there's a coalition of the willing to go ahead, and that there's a treaty change that would not be accepted. And then you have the demonstration that you can go for such a solution that you draw a side treaty and it's not the best. It's not the favorite option. But this is the way to do it, which means you don't expel. It's the member state that expel itself by its behavior and by it's not winning this. We had the same thinking about the repatriation of compete of competences. You remember in the Brexit debate, there was this whole debate. Where's the list of competence you want to repatriate. And the, the, the answer was empty because no one was able to define, but they want to repatriate so it's not to us. It's not to the EU to say you can repatriate this and this is to the one who are willing not to follow the mainstream to say what they want. And this is why we refuse to have an expulsion mechanism. Let's not say we said nothing about the rule of law. I, as I mentioned in the beginning, we do. I think the more efficient and the more pragmatic way to improve the tools, the legal tools for the rule of law would be to enlarge the scope of the conditionality to article two of the truth. Also, our idea was our in the group with the, the impression was that if you introduce an expulsion clause, you would fundamentally change the constitutional nature of the EU. And then suddenly a member state could be expelled and this would hang up there in the air. This tool of expelling a member state, and also taking away the citizens rights of the citizens, even, even those citizens would, which potentially have a government in place, would really change the fundamental nature of the EU and there we really said as this promotion said, rather strengthen article seven already in theory on article seven you can take away the voting rights which is the strongest sort of membership rights a country has. And we said, please strengthen that and not turn the EU into a club where countries and by that also their citizens could be expelled against their will because it would really change the basis of the EU and also the ways of working if country suddenly would start to sort of discuss expelling one of their members that would certainly poison the cooperation in the EU. The next question is from Alan Jukes who's a former minister of the Irish government. So Alan comes to the point of synchronizing the reform and the enlargement the synchronization of institutional reform and enlargement cannot avoid the treaty change, since any institutional reform and enlargement itself requires such change. Could this imply a series of treaty changes at various stages of a series of enlargement events, the regatta version of enlargement. So, so maybe I can I can start this time we had a lot of discussions about whether this next enlargement how it could take place and we came to the to the conclusion that the most likely scenario is really one of the gutter not sort of a big bang enlargement where all potentially nine countries would join the EU in one go, but rather you might have different groups, for instance, the, the avant garde in the western Balkans, or Ukraine and Moldova joining together rather than than having one big bang. Nevertheless, from our point of view, the necessary reforms would need to happen by the time the first new member, the first new country becomes a member state of the EU. So really, that the reform is in place when this enlargement happens. And this might also be a point of controversy, or difference between our report and what many member states are thinking at the moment so our, our thinking was quite clear that the enlargement should only happen if reform happens, whereas most member states, I think, have accepted that these two processes should happen in parallel, but not necessarily that one should be conditional on the other so for instance you will hear a German official saying, we need to have these two processes hand in hand. But if you pros, if you press them, they will not necessarily say enlargement can only happen if there's reform beforehand. And our point of view, and I would certainly stick to that is, no, we should say we should not fall into the trap of doing enlargement first, and then trying to reform with an EU of 35 but rather by the time the first country joins that reform should be should be agreed and in place. I think I have a second question or further question in that vein asking, for example, if Martin Negro were to meet the accession criteria before 2030, would they be accepted into the union at that time. I think you've answered that question through, if I'm not mistaken through what you've already said, if a country were to meet the criteria before 2030. But then, I mean, sometimes you can legal expert can be very creative to find solution but you would need. I mean, I'm just thinking now we have not envisaged this scenario while drafting the report but you could imagine that if this was the case. And Martin Negro certain is a specific case because it's not the biggest, it's not Ukraine coming into the EU so you can see also the signal and blah blah blah that would push some member states in this direction. But then you would need to have some kind of revision close in in this treaty to make sure you could integrate the new reform that would be settled for everyone. But if you go into the into the report, one of the basis for the drafting of the reports was to have option. And this is also what makes it quite useful for the political discussion that is now opening and in the option. One of the option is to have what we called a framework treaty, which means it's the treaty for the institutional reform that you defined as the framework one, and that you implement in each enlargement treaty. And this can be something that could fit in. But of course, the case you're raising is, would the EU be completely ready to end the negotiation of its own institutional reform as soon as this one. This is for me the political challenge that is now in the hand of the council in the human council as Nicola said, the two last conclusion were better than nothing. I mean, to start with when you had the, I mean, let me Frank when the Commission came out saying the, we can open the negotiation with Ukraine full stop. We had a problem. But when the European Council came with these two paragraph in the two conclusion that you need to have the two in power, we need to stick to this roadmap. But this is not easy. Also because somehow the dynamic of the two process are in the hand of two different institution. The treaty reform is merely solely in the hand of the head of states and government when the enlargement process. Of course, the opening of the negotiation and the closing of the negotiation in is the in the hand of the heads of states and government, but the whole day to day business is in the hand of the commission. And so you can see that in the willingness to demonstrate that you're on the good track, you can have the commission very offensive on the on the enlargement and letting the head of states and government in the in the mess of the reform of the treaty and this cannot be. So this is why the right balance in the conclusion of the human council is very important. And this is why I think what will come out as a roadmap in in the strategic roadmap in in in June is very important and I hope our report can help in this direction. We're coming to the end of our time I'm going to run two questions together that have come in from Barry Culphor, who's the director, you've met Barry, director of research at the IEA. One asks, in relation to your proposal for the EU to issue common debt in the future, given that there has been some experience of this with NGEU following COVID-19 that it can be done effectively. What are the main barriers to this becoming a core EU competency or procedure. And his second question notes that your paper calls for more enhanced cooperation between smaller groups of member states to finance policies together. Can you say something about what sort of things that that those might be perhaps you if you wish you may split those between yourselves in the interest of hitting in as much as we can in the short remaining time. Nikola take the one you want. Okay, I can maybe because the objections from the German sides are more on the second one I can I can take one I can take that one. First maybe saying that within our group we rarely have ever had any kind of sort of the French here and the Germans on the other side disagreements. I think that maybe came closest to that was the one on on joint boring, which is something where certainly the governments have very different different positions as we see currently for the debate on some kind of defense, boring in the future and the German position on other. I think the French position on that is it should happen on the basis of the current treaty, it was possible on next generation EU and should be done on other challenges, including on on defense, and the German position is that this next generation EU boring was a temporary one time crisis measure, and that in, and then this should not easily be replicated. And if it does so, it needs a change in the treaty because the German constitutional court ruled that it was legal for during the pandemic, but only in the exceptional circumstances of a crisis. And if there's some kind of permanent boring capacity that would require a change to the treaty of a competence of the of the EU to do that and then finally there of course these more philosophical differences between, let's say more for good countries, which are very wary of risk sharing and further joint debt and countries who say for the eurozone to function properly for the EU to function properly, it needs its own physical security and the possibility to borrow a jointly. And here I think the jury is still open, and might be decided on defense, where the next generation EU was a one of events, like the Germans like to say or whether it's a template for further joint boring, like France and others are pushing for. Yeah, I think it's just useful to recall what we have written in the report we all we would also draw on the positive experience of the next generation EU by enabling enabling the EU to issue common debt in the future. And this, and we had around agreement of all the members of the expert group so this is the state of the play and I think it's a it's an important point also in the discussion to come. Let's say when it comes to a financing some special project among some member state. This is exactly an example of where we have applied the principle of being conservative and flexible conservative meaning, we want to make it possible for the state to have such a to find such project but we wanted to do it inside the community method, and not outside. And the way to allow this, it is to be creative, and to accept some flexibility with the budget rules are put in place which is, if you would have, for example, let's take the one concrete example that has been currently pushed on on the project for batteries where France and Germany have been pushing a project. Instead of doing it on a bilateral basis always the willing member state you would do it inside the framework of the Commission, but only the member state willing to participate to this project would have to contribute to it but it would be under the leadership the legitimacy of the Commission, which means it's not a subject for exclusion of others. It's inside an open box where member state can join at any time, inclusive. Thank you both very much. I think we've come to the end of our time. There are more questions, both on my own part and on part of some of the audience I apologize for not being able to reach them all. But I do want to extend very sincere thanks to both of you for your generosity with your time and with your insights. And that those that derive from the work of the group as well because innovation is required in relation to finding solutions to these complicated complex issues of the interlocking issues of enlargement and reform and the paper and your explanations of it and your contacts in the context of that. Are extremely valuable. So we look forward to hearing from the European Council. I think the phrase used was by the summer of 2024 so we're waiting to see when exactly the summer, the summer falls and given the given the scope of the the topic but also of your paper. It would be tremendously useful and interesting to hear from both of you again in the future as this process unfolds, perhaps in the context of the relationship we have with the SVP and the IEA or perhaps in the context of your return visit to the to the IEA. Thank you both very much. Thank you to the audience for the questions. Thank you for the engagement. It's good to see this discussion getting underway.